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Life Sciences Becomes a Beacon for Law

It isn’t the beach and perfect weather that have led to an increase in the number of San Diego offices set up by national and international law firms.

It’s the burgeoning life sciences industry, say experts in the legal field.

“It’s San Diego’s No. 1 drawing card,” said Larry Watanabe, co-founder of Watanabe Nason, the San Diego-based legal search corporation that helps law firms acquire partners or new affiliations or offices.

As the San Diego life sciences industry has grown since its inception in the early 1980s, so too has the city’s appeal to national and international law firms. These firms say they want to be full-service, and that means moving into the life sciences space by offering intellectual property services in San Diego.

Biotechnology has become synonymous with San Diego during the last couple of decades as the city has morphed from a largely industrial town to a diverse life sciences cluster. Today, San Diego biotech firms pull in more venture capital money than any other industry here quarter after quarter. In the first quarter of 2006, San Diego biotechnology firms attracted $122 million from venture capitalists, according to the quarterly, national PriceWaterhouseCoopers MoneyTree survey. Nationally, San Diego’s biotech industry has been regularly listed in the top three for cities receiving the most VC money.

“There really isn’t that draw for Los Angeles and Orange County,” Watanabe said.


Decade Makes A Difference

In the late 1990s, only two national law firms were located here: Cooley Godward and the former Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison. Today, there are several more , with at least three having located here within the last three years. In May, the 450-lawyer, Boston-based international firm Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo established an office in San Diego with 12 attorneys with plans to grow. The new location, created mostly with lawyers recruited from local intellectual property firm Fish & Richardson, focuses largely on intellectual property litigation, but also has corporate, securities and employment practices.

In 2005, national firm Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney based in Pittsburgh, Pa., acquired an intellectual property firm called Burns, Doane, Swecker & Mathis, which had 55 lawyers, including several in San Diego.

“Buchanan had recognized that the life science community made San Diego a very strong marketplace and had probably been underserved,” said Dan Pascucci, managing shareholder in the San Diego office, which now has 21 attorneys. Buchanan Ingersoll has locations in eight states and Washington, D.C.

Pascucci said the San Diego intellectual property group, together with Buchanan’s Food and Drug Administration compliance services at its D.C. office, enable the firm to, “bring services like it’s never been before.”

“Twenty years ago, you wouldn’t have found companies in San Diego that would’ve needed FDA services,” Pascucci said.

In the last several years, Watanabe Nason has helped open new offices in San Diego for major international law firms, including Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker, Morrison & Foerster, Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe and Mintz Levin.

In 2003, a Chicago-based international firm, McDermott, Will & Emery, acquired the former Flores & Campbell. The new office has five attorneys, and is focused mostly on intellectual property. McDermott also has offices in Belgium, England, Germany and Italy.

“Life science was the main reason for us to come here,” said John Hankins, who was brought in from Washington, D.C., to oversee the San Diego office as a partner. “(San Diego) was attractive for our practices in areas of intellectual property, health law, corporate work and helping startup companies.”


Profession Less Static

Hankins referred to the legal community as having a “revolving door.”

Eddie Wang Rodriguez, a partner at Mintz Levin’s San Diego office, said, consistent with what’s happening in most fields today, there is much more job mobility in law than in years past.

And sometimes, acquisitions don’t end up working out as expected. Campbell and Flores, for example, are no longer with McDermott Will & Emery. Hankins said, “For whatever reason, some partners leave, and we wish them well.”

“Historically, lawyers worked at one firm their entire career,” said Rodriguez, who chaired Fish & Richardson’s firm-wide corporate practice before helping form Mintz Levin’s San Diego practice.

Steven Rosenthal, who is based in Boston at the Mintz Levin headquarters, is the national firm’s co-managing partner who helped decide to locate an office here.

Besides servicing clients better and gaining new ones in the life sciences industry, establishing a San Diego office can also be better on the bottom line. But Rosenthal wouldn’t say exactly how much.

“It’s only a few weeks old. It’s impossible to quantify, but the lawyers have hit the ground running very hard,” Rosenthal said. “This is a practice we weren’t able to do before now. We’re very focused on our clients. We’ve hit the market right with the right group. Early returns are phenomenal.”

As large law firms get larger, they want to add different types of lawyers , including intellectual property , to become more full-service to their clients , a one-stop shop, if you will, industry veterans said.

From 1999 to 2005, the number of lawyers at a few of the largest law firms in San Diego have remained fairly consistent, while most of the rest of the practices have increased in size, according to the San Diego Business Journal’s Book of Lists.

“You’ve gotta be in San Diego if you consider yourself a high-tech law firm,” Rodriguez said. “It’s hard to leave San Diego for a lot of reasons. There’s a lot of intelligence in this town, and law firms started to realize that.”

But Watanabe, the legal search firm owner, said there’s not enough local business to go around. He said he gets phone calls from law firms at least twice a month asking about opportunities to service life science companies here.

“Life sciences is hot. Medicine is hot.” Watanabe said. “The fact that it’s a coastal city doesn’t hurt. It’s a beautiful place to live, but it’s more about the corridor we have here as it relates to life sciences. It really doesn’t have to do with the weather.”

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